Exceptional Promise Evidence Review. Application guidance

Stage 1
1

Hello everyone,

I’m a software engineer with 4 years of experience. I need help with reviewing my evidence list to gauge my chances of getting an endorsement.

Specific questions/doubts about some evidences are put in parentheses.

LORs:

  • Head of Engineering (Mid sized company in Germany, raised 1m EUR) - C1

  • Founder and CEO of digital tech company in Nigeria, also a U.S army veteran (Company has numerous media mentions) - C2

  • Co-founder of global Digital tech company (Gotten into numerous accelerators, raised a bit of money, many media mentions)

MC:

  • Significant technical contribution to C1 (tasks assigned, code contributions) - Supported by reference letter from ex-team lead at C1
    (They’re not currently in a leadership position at their new company; would their letter still move the needle?)

  • Evidence of high remuneration from previous employment contract stating how much I earn and how it’s comparable to salaries on a global scale.
    (I no longer work here, and I wonder if it would be a problem if I chose to apply using this as it’s been about 6 months now, and I don’t have any full-time engagements.)

  • Significant Contributions to another Open source project (562 stars, Won an Open Source bonus award from Google), - Supported by: Reference letter from the author of the open source project stating the significance of my contribution.

  • Wrote several articles for a top publication (paid) about various technologies and while I may not be able to get data such as number of views/reads for the best ones, can I point to stats such as number of backlinks to my article(75), the Github repository created by me for some of the articles got up to 25 stars, and searching for related topics put my articles as the first result?

  • Evidence speaking at developer conferences with over 100 attendees.

OCs:

OC2:

  • Made it to Gitlab’s(large renowned company) top annual open source contributors list in 2020 - supported by my Github profile showing evidence of collaboration, including my involvement with several other open source projects - further supported by my stackoverflow profile of which my answers have reached 5k people.

  • Evidence of mentoring at a U.S.-based NGO that teaches people tech skills - supported by a reference letter from one of the facilitators.
    (I’ve been mentoring here for the past 6 months and plan to keep mentoring there for at least a year longer, is this an issue since the criteria states having a track record of mentorship?)

OC3:

  • Significant technical contributions at C2, focusing on my impact, including media mentions of the feature I worked on going live.

  • Reference letter from CTO of C2 talking about my impact.

Thank you, I’d appreciate any help I can get.

2

Hi @codiini

MC: It is not an issue if support letters for criteria are not from leadership levels. It is also ok to show last remuneration - you can perhaps mention you are in the mid of finding your next opportunity.

OC2: if the mentoring is part of a structured program with selection , it should be fine. 6 months is a good timeline to show a track and not just one-off.

OC3: you may want to add atleast 1 more unique evidence here. Both your evidences pretty much talk about the same narrative hence not very strong.

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3

Hi @pahuja I appreciate your feedback. Thank you very much.

OC2: Yes it’s a structured program with selection.

OC3: What If I moved the 3rd evidence from the MC (“Significant OS contribution”) to add to OC3?

Also, overall, do you think my evidence list so far, if presented properly, stands a good chance of getting the endorsement? Thank you again.

4

The chance of success of endorsement depends on the quality and depth of evidence documents hence it’s hard to comment with just the structure. Your structure looks fine though!

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5

Yeah, that makes sense; thank you! What do you think about moving the 3rd evidence from the MC (“Significant OS contribution”) to add to OC3?

6

That could work: but you may need to show 1 more if you have? Your OC3 will fall in the below examples:

  • Starting or contributing to open source projects in a way that has been acknowledged by peers as advancing the field;
  • Having worked as a key engineer in the core product of a start-up, showing evidence as to how you have contributed to its success.
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